NEVADA With Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham expected to make a recommendation to President Bush sometime this winter about the Yucca Mountain project, a General Accounting Office audit has raised serious questions about the energy department’s investigation into the proposed nuclear waste dump site. The report, which was leaked to the press on Nov. 30, notes […]
GAO drops a bomb on Yucca Mountain
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
The Latest Bounce
A resolution to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling has been derailed in the Senate (HCN, 11/5/01: The Arctic: A slave to luck). Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, attempted to force the issue through by hitching an amendment to a railroad retirement bill, but failure to build the needed 60 votes of support […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Cybermapping the West – a new view
Cybermapping is a template of the inside of things, a grand tapestry of our cumulative desires. It’s our shadowmap.
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Heard around the West
Can drinking milk be considered cool? Former Idaho Dairy Princess Colleen Underwood thought so, if she could just copy some tricks from Coca-Cola and Pepsi. So during her reign as cow-milk royalty two years ago, Underwood leased a vending machine, put photos of the Dixie Chicks guzzling milk on the front, then filled it with […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Economics with a heart, but no soul
In 1996, Thomas Michael Power wrote Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies, an economic study of the Interior West, in which everything that happened was for the good. If the West were not the best of all worlds, it was as good as life would get on the coasts. We had half the money, but twice […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Ranchers’ group adopts practical strategy
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. One Montana environmental group grew from different roots than most of the movement. The Northern Plains Resource Council was founded by cattle ranchers who opposed coal strip-mining 30 years ago – and today, ranchers and farmers make up about half the 3,000 members. Moreover, […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
‘We better start moving ahead’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Wayne Hirst is an accountant in Libby, the small town in northwest Montana where asbestos mining has sickened hundreds and led to the town’s consideration as a Superfund site (HCN, 3/13/00: Libby’s dark secret). Libby is more than half busted, with the logging industry […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
‘We don’t rest … on economics’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bob Decker has put in 14 years working for several Montana wilderness groups. Now he’s executive director of the Montana Wilderness Association, which, he says, works the grass roots, with 10 staffers in offices spread around the state. Eighty-five percent of the group’s 4,300 […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
A crowded Washington wilderness gets ugly
The Forest Service tries to manage the masses
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Protecting Arizona’s underground wonderland
State agency may condemn private land near Kartchner Caverns
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Gold may bury tribe’s path to its past
Bush administration revives mine project in Southern California
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Tommie Bell: Supporter and sustainer
A woman with a vital connection to High Country News died on Nov. 19. Though her name did not often appear in the paper, Muriel “Tommie” Wilcox Bell helped sustain the publication during its formative years. The story began when Tommie bought her husband, Tom, a subscription to a Wyoming-based tabloid called Camping News Weekly. […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Dear Friends
Winter break It’s time for our traditional winter break, when we give staffers time to shovel their driveways and readers time to catch up on back issues of HCN.Our next issue should reach your mailboxes around Jan. 21. Covering the bases Writing and editing a cover story can take months, but even with all that […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Bad moon rising
How Montana’s once-mighty progressive coalition has waned
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
A refreshing view
If there’s anything everyone can agree on about grazing in the West, it’s that livestock’s influence on the land has been ubiquitous. Biologists Carl and Jane Bock have spent much of their lives studying the ecology of one of the few exceptions, an 8,000-acre short-grass prairie in southern Arizona. In their thoughtful new book, The […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Trash talk
It would be a blessing if it were possible to study garbage in the abstract, to study garbage without having to handle it physically. But that is not possible. Garbage is not mathematics. To understand garbage you have to touch it, to feel it , to sort it, to smell it. You have to pick […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Friendship in the Sagebrush West
When I think “anthology,” I usually think boring compilation or shallow “Best of” CD. But this year, three Western women have pulled together an anthology of writing that reminds me more of my favorite mix tape. In Woven on the Wind, editors Gaydell Collier, Linda Hasselstrom and Nancy Curtis unleash an outpouring of new writing […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
A water tale to set you on fire
Documentary filmmaker Drury Gunn Carr doesn’t seem to mind a little violence. Past projects with fellow producer Doug Hawes-Davis record coyote extermination (HCN, 7/31/00: Killing Coyote), wild horse harassment (HCN, 8/13/01: On the trail of an “exotic” native) and prairie dog shooting (HCN, 1/18/99: Another dog done gone) with a grim, unflinching eye. Thankfully, Gunn […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Critical mass
Radiation workers in Ottawa, Ill., “downwinders” in Utah, unsuspecting veterans of the Gulf War – these are among the populations profiled in Learning to Glow: A Nuclear Reader. In the words of editor John Bradley, the anthology offers a glimpse into stories that “have been largely ignored, dismissed or suppressed.” Certain sections will be familiar […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Figuring us out
Dear HCN, As a displaced Montana native and student of Western history, I only began subscribing to HCN last year, although another Yellowstone Park buff had recommended it to me some time before. I’ve enjoyed reading about water, wildlife, ranching and other environmental issues covered in your paper. At the same time, I’ve been trying […]